New Delhi, Feb 10 (IANS) The bookshelf this week combines a mix of facts and fiction.
1. Book: ‘Standing My Ground’; Written by Matthew Hayden; Published by Harper Collins; Priced at Rs.599.
A devout Catholic and a ruthless on-field sledger, a brutal enforcer and a soft-hearted family man – in his autobiography, Hayden confronts these contradictions head on.
He talks frankly about the forces that shaped his journey from fringe international to a giant of the game. He dissects Australia’s tactic of verbal warfare and his own role as a key aggressor. This is not a predictable ball by ball account of stellar career – instead a direct assessment of the matches and people who mattered the most.
2. Book: ‘The Urban Jungle’; Written by Samrat; Published by Penguin-India; Priced at Rs.250.
The protagonist Jimmy, grandson of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli, moves from his home by the edge of the Seeonee forest to a big bad capital where he learns to deal with complicated bus routes, unscrupulous property brokers and shady local goons.
Along the way, he makes a few friends and volunteers his services as a translator for the Bandar-log when he realises that he too could speak the tongue of the monkeys. Trouble brews when he is kidnapped by evil poacher Shamsher Khan. The Urban Jungle is a witty contemporary retelling of Kipling’s Jungle Book.
3.Book: ‘In the Valley of Shadows’; Written by Abhay Narayan Sapru; Published by Wisdom Tree; Priced at Rs.195
The book is a gripping tale by a former officer in the Special Forces of the Indian Army who has seen the situation in the Kashmir Valley first-hand during the year he was posted there. The novel, amid violence that rips the valley, is a compelling story of courage and passion, and the hatred that insurgency generates, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation in its wake.
The tale has been told through the medium of Major Hariharan of the Indian Special Forces, the Pakistan-hardened Mujahid Sher Khan, and Sahira, the local Gujjar girl who has to face her own demons.
4. Book: ‘Black, Brown & Blue’; Written by Suvaprasanna Bhattacharya; Published by Roli Books; Priced at Rs.2,950.
The documentary volume explores the life and work of artist Suvaprasanna Bhattacharya, the realist whose art portrayed 40 years of Bengal’s journey in time through the days of partition, Naxalism, turbulent politics and social change.
His images of the crow used as a symbol of decay, flight and pessimism are akin to the work of Ted Hughes. The clock, capturing the passage of time, is another recurring motif in his art.
5. Book: ‘The Nowhere Nation’; Written by Ashok Mitra; Published by Penguin-India; Priced at Rs.450.
Narrating the story of India as a nascent superpower or putative economic powerhouse that has been the flavour of the decade, the treatise argues that India embraces several historical ages at a single point of time. Three-quarters of Indian citizens are horrendously poor. The rest do well and very well indeed.
According to Mitra, India simmers in its congruities. Reforms will not pry open up the exclusive saloon the Indian superstructure is accustomed to claim; and the usual ‘trickle-down’ defence ignores the difficult truth that jobs do not grow in the short run, they shrink.
